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A closer analogy would be renting a car. And if you rent a car full-time, you can't really call yourself car-less.

In both cases there is a lot of grey areas, but the general concept is the same: If you don't own, maintain or operate (drive) a server/car, you can call yourself server/car-less, regardless of whether a server or car is still being used.

Great response! I will steal this and turn it around the next time some non-technical person asks me about serverless and such stuff. I will compare it to owning a car, using a taxi and maybe leasing a car or using a car-fleet.

Renting a dedicated server is more like leasing a car. You directly manage the car and care very much about its condition.

You're renting it for a few minutes at a time while not caring what it is other than "at least a generic sort of car" or whether it's the same one each time? Sure.

You're renting it long term? That's like leasing a very specific car, so no not really.